The Other Alcott

by Elise Hooper

  “Très bien, très bien, Miss Alcott.” Monsieur Muller turned to May. “This is a fine demonstration of color. The composition is natural and most becoming.”

  Monsieur Krug also beamed. “Mademoiselle Alcott, you must submit this to the Salon.”

  “Please, attach our names to your entry to announce you’re our student,” Monsieur Muller added.

  May’s dumbfounded expression prompted all of the other student painters to laugh good-naturedly. All except Alice. Her jaw tightened. She turned away from the group to return to her own easel. At the end of class, Alice scurried out the door.

  May plodded back to their apartment, worrying over Alice’s reaction to the critique back at the studio. If Alice resented May’s success, perhaps she should have been spending less time at the opera and more time working, as May did. After arriving home, May set out a supper of salmon filets and rice and waited. The brightness of the fish’s flesh faded by the time Alice pushed the front door open, carrying a bouquet of white roses. Instead of joining May at the table, she turned her back and moved to the far corner of their drawing room to arrange a still life of the white roses.

  “Those flowers are lovely, but don’t you want to sit down and eat first?”

  “I don’t have time. I must get to work while there’s still some light.”

  May raised her eyebrows and picked at some rice silently, watching as her friend draped the flowers casually on their sides on a white lace tablecloth. It was a challenging composition, but Alice set to work on capturing the texture and the play of shadows within the white petals without any more mention of eating. May finished her meal and cleaned up the two plates in silence.

  Alice skipped going to the studio the next day and stayed behind to work on her still life, and an uneasiness spread through their rooms with the heavy air of a coming rainstorm.

  THE DAY OF the Salon’s deadline arrived. Alice had stayed up all night finishing her painting. In the morning, her lips looked cracked and painful from being bitten. She pulled the canvas from the easel, gently easing her index finger onto the surface to see if it was still tacky to the touch, but a splotch of dark paint stuck to her fingertip. She picked up some sketch paper and used it to fan her canvas. The messengers were scheduled to pick up May and Alice’s submissions later in the morning.

  The women waited, largely in silence. May propped up her canvas and made a sketch of it to send to her mother. By noon, there was still no sign of the messengers, so she wrote a letter to Marmee to accompany her sketch. Alice paced the drawing room, stopping every few minutes to check if her painting had dried.

  “I feel sick,” Alice said, clutching her stomach.

  “Don’t worry, our paintings will get picked up.”

  “They’re cutting it awfully close.”

  “They must be overwhelmed with deliveries. They’ll come.”

  Alice chewed at her thumbnail and continued to pace, avoiding the space where May stood looking out the window.

  Finally, the messengers arrived in the middle of the afternoon, flustered and distracted by the volume of work they needed to deliver that day. As soon as they left, May and Alice raced ahead to the Palais de l’Industrie to ensure their precious cargo arrived before the magic hour of six o’clock when the doors would shut. A line of wagons lugging sculptures and huge canvases sprawled for blocks. A huge crowd gathered on the stairway to the entrance of the Palais de l’Industrie to preview the work being submitted. As the porters, sweating under the late afternoon sun, carried the artwork into the building, people cheered and booed at the work passing by. The whole scene took on the manic energy of a festival.

  At ten minutes of six, there was still no sign that May and Alice’s paintings had arrived.

  “Could we have missed them somehow?” Alice said, tugging on May’s shoulder.

  May shaded her eyes against the glare of sunshine and looked down the long line of traffic still waiting to arrive at the Palais de l’Industrie. “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe the judges will extend the deadline so all of this artwork can get inside.”

  A snort came from May’s side where a fellow stood cracking his knuckles, eyeing the line of frenzied porters trailing down the block. “No chance. They just shut the doors, no matter what,” he said in a glum tone. The two women exchanged worried looks. The seconds ticked by. Six o’clock arrived.

  “Now what?” May cried.

  The man next to them turned and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Go home. If your pieces snuck by in the mess, they’re in. If they got backed up and are still out there, they’ll deliver ’em back to you this evening.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it. Next year, maybe the messengers will pick ’em up earlier.” He gave a small shake of his head and disappeared into the dispersing crowd.

  May and Alice looked at each other, unable to utter a word. They wandered down the stairs and cut along the grass to avoid the dust kicked up by the wagons and horses. After weeks of working all day and night, May moved as though her buttoned calf leather boots had been dipped in lead. She looked down the line of traffic waiting to exit the front of the Palais and spotted a familiar dark green wagon. One of their deliverymen sat on his bench above the empty cargo bed. He saw May, tipped his cap to her, and gave a wink.

  “Look!” May pointed at the wagon. “He’s empty. He made it in time!”

  Alice pulled May into an embrace, and the women leaned into each other, laughing with relief. May closed her eyes, cherishing her friend’s joy after a week of strained silence. Their work had finally made it into the Palais and had a chance to be accepted into the Salon. But more important, May thought, our friendship remains intact.

  Chapter 29

  All of Paris obsessed over the upcoming Salon. People everywhere—Monsieur Krug’s studio, the hallways of the Louvre, and Montmartre’s cafés—spent countless hours debating whose work would get in and whose work would not. When May received a note from Mary inviting her to a different, smaller art show, May readily accepted, eager to be distracted from thinking about the Salon.

  Over the winter, Mary Cassatt and May had met several times at the Philadelphian’s studio to have tea and discuss the city’s art world. Mary told May about a group of artists who were experimenting with composition, style, and technique. After their work was consistently rejected by the Salon for several years, the renegade artists assembled their own independent show. The press dubbed them “Impressionists” and derided the artists as lunatics, yet the group persisted, remaining committed to challenging the boundaries of what was considered art. Their unconventional work and perseverance intrigued May.

  On the day she was to meet Mary at the show, May turned onto rue le Peletier and saw her friend wearing a distressed expression as she waited outside the building housing the show.

  May hurried toward Mary. “What’s the matter?”

  Mary tucked her chin down and whispered, “I can’t help myself. I’m convinced my entry to the Salon this year will be rejected.”

  “Goodness, if you’re worried, the rest of us don’t stand a chance. You’ve had such successes with the Salon.” May thought of the study she had seen of Mary’s first entry: a lovely traditionally styled portrait of a young folk girl holding a mandolin. Mary’s Salon exposure over the years had led to several of her paintings being sold to dealers in New York City, and she regularly received commissions to create new pieces of work.

  Mary shook her head and fidgeted with her gloves. “I just don’t feel like I’m painting what I really know. When I was rejected two years ago, my instructor advised me to darken the background, so I did, and it was accepted the following year. It makes no sense. It seems there’s no method to the madness, yet our very careers hinge upon these capricious judges.”

  “I know, but I’m just trying to stay hopeful.”

  Mary raised a gloved hand to her temple and continued speaking as if she hadn’t heard May. “Don’
t you think it’s absurd that all it took was a minor change for my painting to be accepted? I’m convinced it’s all very political.”

  May reached for her friend’s gloved hands and looked into Mary’s agitated eyes. “We did our best for the Salon, and now we must wait. In the meantime, let’s try not to think about it, or I shall get very nervous, too.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been obsessing over my work and doubting everything recently. But I should remain optimistic like you and not lose my head.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly optimistic that my painting will be accepted, in fact, I think it’s very unlikely.” May shrugged and smiled. “But I’ve nothing to lose by trying.”

  “True. I admire your fearlessness.”

  “Some might call it foolishness.”

  “Well, whatever it is, I like it about you.” Mary wrapped an arm around May’s shoulders and led her into the exhibit. A huge canvas hung in the entry, showing an intersection of several streets. Paris’s hulking new limestone buildings dominated the background.

  Mary cocked her head as she studied the painting. “Hmm, isn’t that Carrefour de Moscou in North Paris?”

  “I feel as though something’s wrong with my eyes. It looks fuzzy,” May said, blinking furiously as she studied the figures carrying umbrellas in the painting.

  “No, I don’t think so.” Mary took a step closer to the canvas. “Look, the couple right in front of us are slightly out of focus, and it’s the people there”—she pointed to the middle of the composition—“who are depicted clearly. Why, it’s like a photograph!”

  May wrinkled her nose as she tried to make sense of it. “But why is one man cropped halfway out of the painting?”

  “I’ve never seen such a monumental painting that wasn’t some sort of Biblical or historic scene.”

  “I feel as if I’ve never seen such a monumental-sized painting of anything. It’s huge. It must have taken ages.” May leaned forward to see the information tag next to it: “Rue de Paris; Temps de pluie by Gustave Caillebotte,” she read aloud. “Does that mean Paris Street; time to rain?”

  “It translates roughly to Paris Street; a rainy day.”

  They continued along the wall of canvases. The show was composed of five rooms and a couple of hundred paintings. “Is this much smaller than the Salon?”

  “Oh, you have no idea.” Mary gave a small laugh. “Just wait.”

  A tall, gray-haired man with an intense expression passed them and tipped his hat to Mary.

  “Who was that?” May whispered.

  “A painter named Monsieur Degas. Remember those sketches I showed you when we first met? The pictures of the women hanging in the window of the Durand-Ruel Gallery? He created them.”

  “The pastels?” May thought back to those ballerinas and watched the man. He looked back at Mary and paused momentarily before exiting the apartment. “Do you know him?”

  Mary made a noncommittal sound and continued to study the paintings on the wall.

  May was drawn to a series of paintings by a man named Claude Monet set inside a train station. Great swathes of swirling steam hovered in the air, dwarfing the people painted on the bottom portion of the canvas. Looking at the paintings, May could practically feel the heat rising from the black trains and hear the din of the travelers and shuddering groans of the locomotives. She walked along the series, admiring the man’s ability to create atmosphere and lighting. Monsieur Monet’s paintings evoked the grand atmospheric landscapes and maritime scenes of J. M. W. Turner, though these had a more modern sensibility with the emphasis on machinery and city dwellers. Upon close inspection, the canvases appeared to be lumpy, as though they had been coated in thick globs of paint; this technique—or lack of technique—would be very different from the thin layers of paint applied with invisible brushstrokes May expected to see at the Salon.

  When the women left the show, Mary was quieter than usual as they walked back toward their homes, undoubtedly still worrying over her Salon entry. May allowed herself to imagine how enormous the show at the Palais de l’Industrie would be and her stomach dropped at the thought. Canvases would cover every square inch of wall from the floor to the ceiling while crowds of people covered every square inch of floor. Indeed, the Impressionists’ show was small and empty in comparison to what the Salon promised, yet despite this, May couldn’t help but marvel at the rebelliousness of their experimentation.

  MAY AND ALICE were home from Monsieur Krug’s for lunch when a loud rapping at the door startled them. May answered the door, adjusting her eyes to the twilight of the hallway before seeing a messenger slouched against the wall. He thrust two envelopes into her hands and darted away. She shut the door and turned to find Alice watching, her face grave. In silence, she passed Alice her envelope. With sweating hands, May tried to remind herself that entering a painting into the Salon had been merely a lark without any hope of success. Her fingers shook as she pulled off the seal to open the letter.

  L’Académie des Beaux-Arts est ravie de vous annoncer que votre tableau a été accepté au Salon de 1877.

  May gave a small laugh which came out more as a strangled throat clearing and looked up to find Alice’s eyes locked upon her.

  “Did you get in?”

  May nodded, unable to trust her voice.

  Alice stared down at her letter as if the power of concentration alone could somehow alter the wording of the news in her hands. She remained in place, ran a hand through her curls, and looked downward. Her eyes blinked furiously. May’s excitement crumpled under the weight of her friend’s obvious disappointment.

  “Oh, Alice, thousands were turned down.”

  “But not you.”

  “I got lucky.”

  “How are you always lucky?” Alice spat out the words and whirled away. Moments later, a door slammed.

  Stunned, May left the apartment and went back to the art studio. Why did people always think she was so lucky? She worked like the devil to make good things happen. She stalked back to Monsieur Krug’s, and her classmates were thrilled at her happy news, but the knowledge she must return to face Alice put a knot in the pit of her stomach. After class, her classmates took her to a café in the Place Pigalle to celebrate, but when the group all pushed their spoons toward the plate of chocolate eclairs in the middle of the table, May drew back, a sense of nausea burning at the back of her throat. She swallowed and politely excused herself to walk home alone.

  She arrived back at rue Mansart to find Alice sitting on the settee in the drawing room, reading. A stack of addressed envelopes sat on the end table beside her elbow. May hovered, uncertain whether to sit or continue into the next room.

  “Claudette made a quiche Lorraine before leaving,” Alice said, not looking up from her book. “It’s cooling in the larder now.”

  “I thought I smelled something delicious. I hope she shut the kitchen window or one of those spiteful cats will be in there eating our dinner. I’ve never seen such fat feral cats before.”

  Alice did not lift her eyes from her book. In silence, May retrieved cutlery and set the table for two in the drawing room.

  “I already ate. I won’t be joining you.”

  May picked up the extra place setting and returned it to the kitchen. When she came back to the drawing room, she sat across from her longtime friend.

  “I’m terribly sorry you’ve been disappointed today.”

  Alice raised her head from her book and looked at May with a cool expression. “I’ve decided I’ll return to Boston.”

  “When the studio closes for the summer next month?”

  “No, immediately.”

  “You can’t go. We’ve been on this journey now together for so long. Next year, you’re bound to . . .”

  Alice closed her book with a decisive snap that made May jump. “I’m leaving. I’ve been here for a few years now. It’s time.” She gave an impatient small shake of her head. “I was waiting to see what the Salon would bring, but now I’m just to
o disappointed to wait any longer. I’ve been working so hard. I thought I had a chance when Monsieur Krug and Monsieur Muller reviewed your work. It’s just . . .”

  It’s just that you’ve been studying longer than me? You’ve opened so many doors for me? You’ve studied with more illustrious masters? May squeezed the arms of her chair as she imagined all of the things her friend could say. Alice was the one who started May off on this quest when she met her at the Bishops’ party, almost seven years ago, and May’s heart ached to think of the jealousy now separating them, but at the same time, defensiveness pulsed in her shoulders as if urging her to raise her arms into a fighting stance as she had seen her nephews do. All of her hard work finally yielded some results. All of the times she said no to attending a concert, a race, a dance—all of her sacrifices had finally paid off. She refused to apologize for her success, but she took a deep breath.

  “You mustn’t take this so hard. Everyone is complaining about the unfairness of the judging. Why, last year Mary submitted a painting they rejected the previous year. All she did was darken the background, submit it a second time, et voilà, it was accepted. It’s crazy!”

  Alice nodded impatiently. “I know, I know, but all of the judging controversies do little to make me feel better. I wanted this so much.”

  May sighed; she understood. All of them wanted acceptance no matter how much they convinced themselves it was meaningless and unfair. It was absurd that a panel of stodgy old men decided their fates, and even though the Académie had been officially separated from the government’s oversight the decade before, everyone knew the judges were conservative and political. Who were they to decide what was beautiful? The old geezers simply continued to reward the male artists who had moved through the system of L’École des Beaux-Arts painting subjects that paid tribute to France’s centuries of tradition. May’s small still life certainly fit in the vein of acceptable work, but didn’t Alice’s as well? There was no rhyme or reason to it, May thought crossly.